Amira Alvarez of The Unstoppable Woman Discusses Setting Financial Goals

This is the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast with your hosts, Chris Spear and Andrew Wilkinson. Each week we'll be speaking with food entrepreneurs and people in the culinary industry. The following episode is one of our COVID zoom sessions. If you're interested in learning more about our organization dedicated to helping people build and grow their food businesses, look us up on the web at chefs without restaurants.com and org, and on Facebook and Instagram at chefs without restaurants. Now, enjoy the show. Welcome, everyone. This is Chris with the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast. Today we have Amira Alvarez, who's the founder and CEO of The Unstoppable Woman, a global coaching company helping entrepreneurs, Empire builders, athletes, creatives and rising stars in all fields achieve their dreams and goals in record time. Welcome, thanks for coming on the show.

Hi, how are ya? Happy to be here.

Yeah, thanks for coming. On the show. So this is a little different. We usually have people exclusively in the food world come on the show and talk about food and how their business is working and sometimes not working. But you're not in the food world. So why don't you tell everyone a little bit more about yourself and what you do?

Sure, I'm not in the food world, but I love food so you can count me in the food world from that perspective. And I am the client. I am the lover of everything that your audience produces in this world.

We don't have business without food lovers.

Right. Exactly. So my, my sphere My world is helping hardworking people with big dreams, execute on them really hold that impossible dream clearly in their mind's eye, and then figure out the steps to get there faster than they previously thought possible. So I like to talk about collapsing time. Doing the what seems like the impossible now and I work with people on all sorts of personal and professional goals. So many of my clients are small business owners or people who are creatives who are going for you know, they want to get the next Harry Potter book written or they want in your case, they want some big aspiration around their, their business, their their food dream to make manifest, and how do we do that faster. And my my particular story around that is that I was an extraordinary hard worker, I had a great business. I had grown it over a few years and had some significant success there financially and impact wise, like I was doing what I really love to be doing doing in this world. But I got to a place where I couldn't work anymore. Harder, right like that, that, you know, we're most of us. I don't know about you, Chris. But most of us in my world, like we were taught, just work harder, right? Like if you really want to achieve what you want, and I'm not dissing hard work because that is a component of of achievement and going after your dreams, but I couldn't work any harder. I was already working the 1012 1416 hour days, it wasn't a matter of effort. So when I went about changing things for myself and trying to shoot for that next level of success, which just to put it in context for people, I went from 30 k my first year in business to 90 k which was a huge jump, huge, huge jump doing something right. Then I went to 138 and it was at that place like not chump change by any means like this is a solid income. But it was at that point where I realized I couldn't grow my impact or my income by just working harder. And I went about looking at what how does bigger success actually work. And that year I five times my income going from 138 to 700 K, which was super fun and blue, my mind, right? And then afterwards I had to be like, what the heck just happened? How did I do that and really back engineer it so that I could teach it to other people whether their big goal and dream is financial or otherwise, it doesn't matter what you're going for. Some people don't have money as the thing, right? That happened to be a good metric for me. But whatever, tell me what you want to go for. And I'll teach you how to get there faster than you'd ever thought. That's my that's my world.

So did you set out with clear things that you wanted to do to get there or did you just kind of learn a little bit, do it And then you went back and learned and realized, Oh, hey, it was this that did it.

So here's the the wackadoodle thing about creation like when I say creation, I mean achieving your goals creating this going from something that's an idea to something that is created in the 3d manifested, you know, I can touch it, feel it, see it world, okay? And the way that I was taught was figure out what's reasonable and then build a plan to that to get there. And when I actually made this, what I call a quantum leap, okay five times in my income and I put it in terms of money because it's such an easy metric for people to see. And but I've done this with my relationships. I've done this with my health like that you can do this in all aspects of your life. The what I ended up figuring out was that you actually have to start with that big stretch goal, that thing that seems absolutely impossible or something that you might achieve in 2030 years. Okay? That it's like that, that would be nice. But I don't know how to do that. That would be nice. Then we decide. We claim it and we decide we're doing it. When you make that decision, this is a super critical piece, when you actually make that decision. And it can't just be like a wish, maybe some days, but like, it's like, I am going to do this come hell or high water kind of thing. Then the means and the How comes in. Does this make sense?

Yeah, absolutely. I think the scary thing and the hard thing is so many people are starting these businesses, and it's the money. You know, like some people start businesses and they have money, but a lot of us most of the people that I know are really kind of bootstrapping it. So it's scary to say like, should I build my own website for free or should I hire someone in And pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to do that. You know, as someone who built their own website, I was very happy with what I did. But it wasn't until I paid the money to have someone refreshed my website that like, I got more contacts, like the website look more professional. He added a contact form that I didn't have. We made it simple to buy gift certificates online, but it was really scary to say like, Wow, I can't do this myself. And I'm going to lay out a good deal of money. Gee, I hope this works. And I think what I see is so many people have trouble taking that leap of faith of like, it takes money to make money and what should you be spending the money on and I think that's where a lot of this comes in is what I'm seeing firsthand with both my business and close friends

One hundred percent 100%. So and here's the thing it happens at so so I call it running the stairs. We start where we're at, like just know where you're at here. I am on a I'm going to build my DIY website. paying someone is too scary for me. I'm going to start there, start there, you did it. You took that step. And then you realized it wasn't. It wasn't supporting you well enough, okay? And the thing with money is that money is a tool. It's a resource for more like to do more things with, okay? And when we use it, it stays in circulation with us, okay? When we say I'm afraid to use it, we cut off that flow. So when you said, I actually need to hire someone who's better at this than I am okay to help me and you made that leap a flake, you actually had an expectation that it would work, okay, even though you were afraid to spend the money. And in doing so, you actually learned an amazing lesson, which is that when you have the expectation that it's going to work You make a good choice, and you spend the money, you get something in return. Now sometimes people hire the wrong web designer, right? And they spend money and it's not the right thing and you have a choice that that like not the right thing from a perspective of it didn't give you the specific result that you wanted. But what I teach my clients is if you can change your perspective about that and see it take person hundred percent personal responsibility, see, see the lesson in it and learn from it. That is money well spent, and you will continue to grow. Okay, I've made many mistakes around expenditures of money from the perspective of like, I paid for this and I wanted this but I didn't get it. Okay. And that's, that's the cost of doing business. That's cost of being a business person. You have to take some risks. But those, quote unquote mistakes have been the most powerful things. Some of the most powerful things I've ever done in my business in terms of building my own confidence and truth and knowledge.

Yeah, it's not always gonna work out. It's like here where I live in Frederick, I joined the Chamber of Commerce. It was really good. I wasn't getting quite what I was hoping. But I noticed most of my business was coming from Alexandria, Virginia. So I joined their chamber, which cost a lot more money. And you know what, I actually got less success out of that, that I was hoping, you know, and you, it's like, Okay, well, maybe that wasn't the right one for me, or I wasn't doing something right. But it's like, I felt like I had to act on that hunch, and spend the money and it was like $400 to join and it's like, you know, I got a little bit out of it in a year, but not what I thought I was going to so you learn so then you just don't renew next year. And then you know, maybe you need to find a different chamber or put it into a different DNA group or something. Or maybe just take that $400 and run Facebook ads like, but you got to try sometimes to at least figure out if it's gonna work.

Yeah. And in the beginning, I would say when I was really bootstrapping my business because I bootstrapped and I was DIY and everything. There were a lot of false starts like that. And you need to have persistence. Persistence is one of the key components. If you look at I joined the chamber, it didn't work out, I spent $400. I made a mistake. I might as I'm a eff up, I might as well stop, right. I don't I don't know how to run a business. I don't know what to do all like, if that's the story, and you stop, then that mistake becomes a failure. Okay. But if you recognize that in every temporary defeat, there is the seed of something amazing in it, and you stay in persistence and commitment to your bigger goal. You will succeed Right. So it's absolutely, like find the way keep going.

I know your business really focuses on individual kind of customized, but there's got to be some very broad advice you would give. So, in your opinion, what are some things to maybe bootstrap versus not when you're starting out? If you're just starting right now with a business? Where would you start? What do you think? I mean, a lot of it is skills aside, like not everyone can build a website, not everyone's good at social media or whatever. But in your opinion, what are some things you think people could save some money on and try to do and what do you think just like, hire someone?

Well, when I was first starting out, I did everything. Okay. So I'm going to answer a slightly different question and then I'll get more specific to that. So I want your audience to really think about what what they're good at, okay, what they're naturally inclined to. You will as you grow your business have to do things that you're not naturally inclined to and grow into some some aspects. But for instance, for me, I'm really good with people. I love people. I would meet people at events. And then I would continue friendships online on the various social media platforms very genuinely. Okay. And so I, and this is something that's beautiful for this time where we're all social distancing, right? That, but it's beautiful for all times, like, it doesn't matter. I did this 678 years ago, where I just created friendships and real rapport online that cost me nothing. But then I ended up leveraging it in my business. Here's the thing, Chris. General, a huge big concept here. Money comes from infinite intelligence or spirit, God, whatever you want to call The Universe. Okay. That is continuing. really expanding it is a it's growing. There's more money in circulation now than there was 20 years ago then when there was 100 years ago, thousand years, it's expanding. Okay? We live in an expanding universe. Money comes from that energy source through people, not from people but through people through sales. Okay? So if you want to create more money in your business, you have to get good with salesmen. There are a lot of people who, you know, have stuff in their head I did. Like I don't want to be manipulative. I don't want to be salesy. I don't want to be pushy. You have to you have to learn that sales a service and really wrap your head around that we didn't probably have a you know, I teach on this. We could probably talk for an hour on this Okay, subject alone, but but sales money comes through the transaction sales through people. Okay, so you gotta have you got to relate to people. So I would ask your audience From the very beginning, where do you relate to people the best? Is it in person? If it's in person? Is it picking up the phone? Is it talking to the ability to chatting? Is it podcasting? Like you have to get good with people, network, online, different places, figure out where that is for you. And then the other thing that I think is a really important piece is you have to stay in touch with people and I talked about social media, the next place that I would go for probably the majority of people is figuring out Facebook ads for themselves in some genuine way to do that. You want to be smart about how you position things, but you also don't want to just be marketing. Stuff that that no one connects with. Your people I think are really trying to have a relationship with their customers. And so develop that skill set in terms of how you write your ads. How you play with it. And that's something that I did early on, I can no longer do that myself. It's a complicated world. But I think you can get a lot of leverage. If you learn that yourself, at least you'll know what works and what doesn't work so that you can then help other people.

Yeah, I think the businesses that do it really well, you know, I'm a big fan of community and engagement. And I know, you see a lot of businesses out there that just kind of push out their message and their advertising, but they don't even respond. Like I'm just amazed in today's world that I go to a restaurant and take a photo of a dish and post on Instagram tag you and like, you literally don't even like my photo, let alone comment. Like there's hundreds or thousands of people out there doing free advertising for you. And you can't even say thank you. And I just kind of, you know, I know it's hard to do but really like just like their phone. I would just say thanks for coming in, you know? Yeah,

yeah. It's these these small, small things and you have to come from a Place. So I think this is again like that abundance mindset versus the scarcity mindset. So a lot of people have scarcity mindset around money, but other people have scarcity mindset around time, like they're looking and they're like, I don't have time to deal with Instagram, right? I don't have time to respond to people you want to really look at if you're coming from this, from that perspective and how much energy it would take to do what you just said, Chris, which was thanks for coming in like that takes zero effort or energy, but the energy that you've spent on Oh my God, I don't have time for this is huge. Okay. It's the same amount of time you've just wasted it basically.

I know it's hard because a lot of people aren't good at in their mind copywriting. I think, you know, when you talk about Facebook ads, I think people think that they have to have this really well written ad and they have to have a professional photo taken and you know, it doesn't take all that you know, it might help. I think, you know, watching some YouTube videos there's tons of tutorials out there on how to run a Facebook ad and do targeting at the very minimum you can get some very basic targeting and then once you get good just you got to drill it in. But I'm you know, I'm all about spending a couple hundred dollars to start and just start running ads and seeing what works and what doesn't work.

Yeah, I mean you can start with $5 a day and like test out an ad and see if it's working and then scale it like you don't actually have to start spending hundreds of dollars from the In fact I would recommend like when whenever we are running a new ad we started like 510 dollars a day to particular audience with you know, and then we test the little tweaks with it and then once it's converting basically then we start adding money to it but but only only after we see it converting and Can I say one more thing here. Like when I first started I I did a program. It's really old now but people loved it. It was called the seven day visit. be challenged. And I did it in my dining room with terrible lighting, not a good camera. Um, it was it was even kind of fuzzy like the the quality of the film was fuzzy. I didn't know. I didn't say everything that I wanted to say. And so I had to add like graphics on the screen later to like fill in the missing pieces. It is one of the most loved things that my clients still tell me that they they so enjoyed loved one, can you launch it again, I really want to do that again. Right? And it was the quality of the Let's call the technical side of things was really basic. Okay, but the content and my energy was so great, that that's what got communicated. So in terms of Facebook ads, or doing a Facebook Live Or was something on Instagram, whatever the format is that your person who's listening wants to sort of start with, just start where you're at. It's fine. You all your Gremlins about being visible and needing to be perfect. You're going to come up and just say, give me three days. I'm going to just do this you can wait you can pause, like all the like whatever and crazy making in your head about like, all that just need to put it on pause, and you're just gonna do it. Okay.

I told some people that the first time I was in a major magazine was first what I call like a stupid blog post. It was like off the cuff. I came home from work. It was like two in the morning I made this cocktail. It was with the worst quality photos like two megapixels, I just took a photo and I put it out on Twitter but someone who follows me who had some notoriety saw it and repost it and then like this writer saw it and contacted me to be in this magazine and you know, it wasn't a craft. photoshoot there wasn't a lot of thought there was no editing to the post, there's like three lines, like, Hey, I got home from work, and I want to make this cocktail and I yank these three bottles out. And here's this thing I did you know, and just launched it in the world. And if I thought about it and taken out the DSLR with the lights, I maybe would have thought, like, is this worth my time? Like, is anyone gonna care? And you know, sometimes those off the cuff things, you just have to put them out there. And if nobody likes it, big deal. Nobody likes it, but like, maybe it works out.

completely, completely 100% agree. And we were having fun with it. Your energy was really was really good with it.

Yeah. And I think there's something to be said for communities as well. Like, maybe you're not into ads. But you know, like, we have a Facebook group and I've gotten as much business through my group and in our own network referral. So maybe you don't need to get good at running ads. Maybe you are a real people person and you're better off getting into a bunch of Facebook groups and networking with those people and then you can be sharing job referrals, like there's a lot of ways to come at it. Absolutely.

We have an amazing community online. And, you know, that's all grown organically, pretty much. And I love that that people are like, I'm having real conversations with people. I'm supporting people. I'm talking to people, you know, they're showing up, they're supporting each other. It's a really, it's a really powerful experience. And ads can help and ask and do things, but like, we were originally talking, like, I started showing up the way I knew how to show up, which was just having real conversations with people. And here's the thing, Chris, I have built I mean, now my, my community is a lot larger, but when I made those big quantum leaps, my community was this big it you don't need that many amazing relationships. You just need a handful of amazing relationships. Okay? Like it really you don't have to have, you know, a 10,000 person following or something like that. Yeah,

I'm a I'm a huge fan of Kevin Kelly's 1,000 True Fans. Do you know that? You know, but I

understand

immediately. Yeah. I mean, he was the CEO or editor of Wired Magazine, but he wrote this blog post, like 10 years ago, and he updated it recently. But the idea of like, take a man like the Grateful Dead, like, if you ask people on the street, most people don't listen to them, right. But the people who do are the guys who like would go on tour and go to like 50 shows and buy all the merchandise. It's the same thing. Like you don't need to go deep you need or you don't need to go wide. You need to go deep. And you know, like, if you really connect with your community, they're the people who are really into what you're doing. They're the ones who will support you, you know, we I'm trying to get some sponsorship for this podcast. It's been really hard. And I put out a thing, just saying, you know, like, if you're interested, here's our Venmo and I had like one person donate $150 like the average donation is over $50. I thought we were Going to get like everyone donating two or $3. And it went the opposite direction. Like we've had people giving 50 100 $150 because they're really into this community and what it's all about. So seeing that kind of thing, how you know, you, you're gonna have a small but mighty community.

Yeah, I love it.

I love it. So when you started spending money on your own business, what were you spending it on? Like? Can you identify the things that were kind of wasted money for you? And then like, what really paid off?

So, I would say that nothing was wasted money because of the frame that I gave you previously, which is like I always learned. I hired a virtual assistant, and initially who wasn't the spot on assistant assistant for me. But I stay persistent and I found someone else who was great and then I scaled that side of things. So I really believe in getting team to To help, like as soon as you can, like, if you want to leverage, you can't do everything yourself. So for me, it was a virtual assistant you need in your biz, it might be hiring people to help cook front of the, well, you're without restaurants so but

like, if you're gonna say front of the house like I was, we still serve food like I go into people's homes, because that is something that I see other people in my community doing like right now I pretty much do it all myself like I cook food and then I bring it out to them. But I know a lot of personal chefs who are also hiring a server so that they can just stay in the kitchen and cook and have someone do that. And so that's another example of things that I have to assess. Like, how much does it impact the experience by me having to do all this like, Is it worth the money to hire someone to do front of the house? Or is the experience more personal if I do it, so I'm always looking at those kinds of things.

Yeah. And and it doesn't have to be an either or Chris. So if you love the cooking and you love the people stuff, Maybe you still scale and you hire someone to do the people stuff half the time and you do the people delivery stuff half the time and they do some of the cooking half the time right or your your your hiring people while you're still enjoying the what you want to do, but you can you can do it your way. But if you have to get really clear about the vision of what you want, and then that the exact format that's going to work spot on for you, the way I do it is not the way you need to do it. Like it needs to be correct and applicable for you. But there is really no way to scale. Like there's three ways to make more money. Okay, there's selling more widgets. So that's like more food. Okay, there's charging more raising your price point. Okay, there's probably an upper limit to what people are going to pay for the food. You know, but you see it, there's a whole spectrum in, in, in price point, and then adding a new channel to income. And those are really the three ways that you can make more money in your business. Okay? And so if you want to sell more widgets, okay, sell more food, there's a cap to how much you can create, right? As one person. And then there's a cap with two people and then there's a cap with three people, okay? And the trick is define the exact right mix for you and your vision of what your ideal company is. and there needs to be a mix between Okay, my, my favorite financial goal is this. And what I love about my business is this, how do we bridge those two things and when I see people Doing is like an either or on that. either. I have to sacrifice everything that I love and want to get the money, or I'm not going to make as much money because I really want it doesn't have to be that way. It can be both. And that's a really important piece to this. Yeah.

So what are your thoughts on trying to do multiple of those at once? Like should you choose to? I'm going to try to focus on selling more food or try to focus on a second stream of income or think about raising my prices? Or do you say like, maybe I will raise my prices by $10 ahead, but I'm also going to work on that side hustle and think about hiring someone, like if you needed a finite energy, like what would you recommend doing there?

So it really does so everything is is dependent on the person's dream, okay, like I know that sounds like we want a one size fits all but it's not if it were, then everyone would be doing this okay. But But here's the thing you have to choose What you want first, okay, you have to say, this is what I want. Okay? Because desire is causative, it's the engine that causes all the decisions then to be made the How to come in. Okay, so, there, there isn't a one size fits all. What I see people do is sabotage themselves in a number of different ways. Sometimes that does look like trying to do too many things at once. Okay. But not always, okay, sometimes adding that channel of income, even though it's a stretch energy timewise it's so much part of their dream, that it's a must have must do. So it's a matter of discernment. And does that make sense? I'm happy to.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's like right now everyone's telling me I should be doing Facebook cooking videos. I have like zero interest in doing that, you know? First of all, I don't even begin to know how I'd monetize that. Like, I'm not looking to nickel and dime it and give me $10 for watching this video for me, I love the podcast and it made sense for me to just do more podcasts, spend more time editing them to get the quality better, and spending more time marketing, I see that as something that I can grow really well right now, to make it so much bigger than to just like, go live on Facebook and show people how to make tortillas like, but everyone you know who's not a business person's like, Oh, you should go and do like this cooking show. It doesn't make sense for me. I can't see financially, or time where it makes sense.

Would you mind sharing with me and your audience? The answer could be no but like what your big dream is like what your what you want to create?

Yeah, so I still want to be cooking, like almost every day, right? But that's really hard to meet financial goals. But because I love people and community and helping people build their businesses. That's why I want to scale the shots without restaurants because I started my personal business. Because I hated what I was doing, which was, I was working in a large kitchen. And as you go, you move up and you're a coach, then you're aligned, cook. And then you know, you're a sous chef, executive chef. And when you're an executive chef here in the office all the time, you're hiring and firing and doing meetings and stuff. And that's not why I got into food, I got food, so I was gonna be able to cook all the time. But that doesn't pay the bills, like what a line cook makes versus what an executive chef makes are huge jumps. So you know, I needed the money to live. So you as you move up, you stop being the practitioner. But then I found as I was building my business, I really enjoyed that process of learning how to run Facebook ads, or build a website or whatever. And I was sharing my story with people all the time and sharing advice. So I thought, let's just start a community where we can crowdsource everything and, you know, we can have a Facebook group and someone could say, what's the best way to build a website and not just me, I'll come on and say, I know how to do it on WordPress and I can help you and someone else is gonna come on, say like, I do it on Wix and I can help you and like, keep that free, you know, so that there's no barrier. I did. want money to be a barrier to entry there, I wanted someone who's like making $10 an hour as a line cook, who wants to start their personal chef business, I didn't want them to have to pay $200 to get that access to information, I wanted to keep it free. And if everyone could chip in their time, then we wouldn't need to monetize it that way. So I guess the short answer is I want to cook as much as I can. But I also want to scale and grow chefs without restaurants to a huge global business venture that helps people also recognize and realize their dreams of starting a food business.

I love it. The thing that's not clear there, and you might not want to share this with your entire audience, which is totally fine. But the thing that I would, if I were coaching you on it, I would ask you, so you want to be cooking all the time you want to scale. How much money do you want to make, right? Because that's a metric that we can actually like the beautiful thing about money Is that it's countable. Okay. And it's very specific. So it tells us without any shadow of a doubt, if we are reaching our goals or not.

Yeah, and I know for me, I always feel like it's almost kind of limiting. If you use a number, like, should you have an aspirationally high number like, so right off the bat, I'd rather I'd like to say, I would at least like to be making twice what I'm making right now. But three to four times, like, bare minimum would be great. Like I'm, I live very meager, you know, like, I don't need a lot of luxury. I kind of hate that, like, I have my $22,000 Hyundai, you know, like, we don't need fancy. I've been unemployed for six weeks, and I've been able to still keep the household running and not really worry about that because of the way we live. But yeah, I mean, I'd like as much money as possible. I mean, I'll take a million dollars if I could get it. But you know, like, where should you set that cap? And what's a realistic goal to say you know, like, I'm here, and I want to be there. This is

great question. Thank you for asking this question. So the last thing you said is the key piece to this, you said, How do I set a reasonable goal should what's a reasonable goal? And that in and of itself is the problem. Okay? You might not like this answer, but I'm going to tell it to you anyways, as someone who has made the impossible possible, right, like if that's what you're going for, there's there's three types of goals. There's a sideways goal, which is, I've made 30 k in this job, I want to make 30 k in this job, right? Like it's a sideways thing, or I've got four clients doing this, for clients doing that, okay, that's, you know, pretty much that you can make that happen for yourself. There's no growth there. It's lateral, okay. Then there's a step goal, which is like, some kind of growth. Okay, so maybe it's doubling your income, maybe it's an extra thousand dollars, maybe it's two more clients, right? Like it's a, it's a, it's something that you would appreciate, okay? It's without a doubt something you would appreciate, but it's just a step. Then there's a third type of goal, which is a stretch goal. And that is something that you have no frickin idea how to create or achieve, but it's what you truly want. It actually gets you super excited. And the challenge that a lot of people have is that they have money stories, okay? Like if I claim that I'm greedy, if I go for that, I'm gonna lose my time with my family. If I do that. Money is the root of all evil money doesn't buy have we have these stories around it. So we instantly get rid of we erase it from our the mind of our In the in the screen of our mind, we just said no, that's not possible. So I would ask you to instead of saying what's reasonable, that's the step goal, okay? to really ask yourself from a different place, what do you truly want? What do you really want? Okay, not what I think I can have. Not what I think I can have and have the do what I want. Okay, but what do I really want to make? Okay. And before you squash that number, recognize what it is. Do you have that in your head? You don't have to say that loud.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay. So that's your number. We don't know it. Does it scare you a little bit?

Yeah, I mean, I've read a lot of books on this I love. I will teach you to be rich by Ramit Sethi You know, he same kind of thing. navall raava Khan talks about that. He talks about setting a aspirational hourly wage for yourself. I don't know if you've ever heard that. And he did this podcast, he's like, yeah, I value my time at like, $5,000 an hour. And it sounds crazy. But like, if I have to go to the grocery store, and it cost me less than $5,000 an hour, I hire someone else to do it, because it's not worth my time. And it's like, the slider of time versus, you know, money and you just hear that you're like, wow, I do a lot of crap for like, the it's not worth the money, or it's not worth the time to save the $5 you know?

Absolutely. So but this is, so there's so many places we could go here, Chris, but one of them that I really want to point out is as it's a self value position, okay. It's one of the things I had to do was I had to start valuing myself, seeing myself as more worthy than I was seeing myself previously. And I had to do that in many ways. By Spending money that I thought was crazy on myself. Okay, not necessarily appropriate examples for you Chris, but I had to pay to get my nails done. You know, I never did that I had to start going to a hairdresser who would do my hair for me. That was like crazy. Okay like to pay someone just to wash and blow dry my hair. That was like crazy. Okay, like that seemed like such a waste of money. But what I did, and this was sort of a personal example on my part was it gave me a sense of like, Oh, I'm worth it. I'm worth spending money on and I started doing that in my business. I'm worth spending money on and getting help, right? Like, for me, it was the VA for you. It would be someone delivering food or someone to do the admin, okay, like if you have a team of Four or five shots working for you, but you want it to be in the kitchen, you would also need to invest in someone doing the operations and admin stuff. Okay, that is a self worth piece. Okay? And every time I have grown in my business I've also had to grow personally hire the personal assistant to go grocery shopping, all of that. I might not be at $5,000 an hour, but maybe I am I haven't done the math on it to be honest. But you know, I started off with getting comfortable with a $45 manicure in like that made all the cells in my body freak out. Like I did not feel worthy of that. So what's the equivalent for you? And then go do that. Okay. And, and, and then I call it running the stairs. How quickly can you move up? And you had that experience of hiring the person To do the website and how that really changed things for you. So what are the things that you could do? What are the next things? And how quickly? Can you get good with spending money and valuing yourself and seeing that it's coming in? And you have to map it to the work that you're doing as well. But

So how much do you think that changes? Now? I mean, with the whole COVID situation, you know, I think people are panicking about money about whether or not if they have their business, it's going to survive if they have a job if they're going to get laid off. And now, I'm sure there's going to be a whole bunch of people talking about, you know, the lean startup and I'm a big advocate of being as lean as possible, but I think you're gonna see a lot more people being conservative. Do you have any advice specifically like right now or is it kind of business as usual? You should still be spending money to make money or have you kind of had to change the way that you're presenting that right now.

You know, I think it's it's industry specific. And I think that people are still spending money right now. We have we can't be an ostrich and pretend like there's not going to be an A, that the economy hasn't already been affected and it's not gonna have a follow on effect. That's true, but But the thing that I would give people is that there are still people who have money that have incomes that are willing to spend money, you in your world, like you might not be having that experience. So you think everyone's having the same experience that you're you're having, but there are lots of people who are ordering takeout every night. Okay? Because they have three kids and they don't want to cook and they never learn to cook and they're used to going out to eat and they're ordering takeout. These people are buying, they're there to their customers. Your job is to meet them and to reach them. So I, I tend to look at things from a perspective of increase, like, how can I make a yes out of this situation? What's the opportunity here? How can I, how can I, the word pivot is being thrown around so many times, but, but it's true. It's like, how can I adjust my thinking and my behavior to fit this new situation? Now, in terms of the flip side of spending, if I am not able to do that, then I need to make an adjustment because I don't want to be, like, not able to feed myself. But I think that, that that's not where I would put my energy. My focus wouldn't be on how can I conserve? My focus would be on how can I create? Okay, how can I make this situation into something that's really viable and workable right now?

Yeah, my co host Andrew has a business called pizza llama. He's a He has a woodfired pizza food truck. And I actually just had him as a guest on my podcast yesterday because he hasn't been doing the show with me. But he's made so many changes to his business that are going to stick with him when all of this is over, you know, kind of pushed them into a place that he had maybe been thinking about a little bit, and wasn't quite ready to do. And then he just had to do it. And now that he kind of rip the band aid off and said, like, Oh, that makes total sense. I'm never going back to doing it the way I did. You know, before you end, yeah, hopefully, people are seeing this and you know, their businesses are going to change. They're hopefully going to be able to adapt, and maybe some good in the business sense will come out of it.

Yeah, it really depends on your attitude.

So when do you recommend someone start working with someone like yourself, or I mean, I guess that's a hard thing to answer. But do you see trends like are people coming to you when they're just starting or after they've been a year and they're kind of nice. getting traction?

So here's what I would say to that. It's a great question. So the fundamentally I help people do two things, one, to get there to start thinking in a different way, so that they can start taking more risks and building their business and growing it in seeing opportunities and taking advantage of it, all of that, that all of that is your thinking, and how to change the way you were programmed to think into something that is much more powerful and will lead to success. So how about having a success and prosperity mindset? Now that can start from day one? My company which I love this aspect of my company, we have so many things that people can access for free at no charge for years if they want. Okay, and can I can I tell people where they can go for that right now? Oh, absolutely. Okay. So if you go to the unstoppable woman calm and if you're not a woman, it's totally fine. You can get this stuff to, like, we're equal opportunity. Okay? So the unstoppable woman.com slash free stuff, super easy just put a free slash free stuff at the end. And the place that I would start people off with primary thing is we do something called the morning mindset club. And you get a short audio every morning. It's a full program, there's like, journal prompts, there's quizzes, there's, it's like a full frickin training. Like, in the past, we have sold trainings like this for like two $3,000. Okay, it is phenomenal. And at the moment, we're doing it at zero charge, because I'm so committed to getting this way of thinking out in this world. So that's where I would tell people to start in the beginning. They just need to get their mindset right about how to approach Money, how to approach business attitude, personal responsibility, making decisions, all these all these aspects, okay? That's absolutely critical then as you start getting your mindset, right and in thinking differently, coming to a live event is a great immersion, it's three days, it's not that expensive, but that will change things even more. And then probably once you're starting to make some money, where you feel like something's happening, but you're hitting a block, you've hit some sort of plateau, but you've already got a track record of making some money. That's when you would want to start working with me. Yeah.

Great. Yeah. And we have pretty extensive show notes. So I'll link everything out there and, and put it out for people because I think they should check it out. How much do you have to get in there in the comment section or on the boards? I mean, are you in the trenches all the time just interacting with people online.

So here's what I do. I have a great team that knows me like is totally aligned with my thinking. They trained into me all of that. So they will like for our social media stuff, they'll come up with stuff and then I'll go in and I'll read and I'll put my magic sprinkles on and I'll edit so it's, it's me, okay, but they've done the first pass of it. And then they figure out the timing for everything to go out. The like the morning mindset club. It's me teaching every morning, okay, there it's not anyone else. It's me. I'm in the trenches. You're getting mee, mee mee mee mee mee like it's in it's like, I am reconfiguring how you're thinking so that you can have a success mindset and go slay and then I have Facebook groups that are part of my paid programs. And I'm in those every day engaging. That's me. And I have you know, one assistant coach We might build that out that's also in there, but again trained enemy. And then I have a free private group. That's not paid. And I'm in there also, but so is my team. And then there are other places where I'm more spotty. Like I'm a little bit more spotty on LinkedIn, and I'm on Twitter as a real human being, like writing stuff a few times a week, right? I'm not like, every single day though. I'm getting. I'm falling back in love with Twitter. So you might see me on there more often. And we just did a tick tock video, right? I did my first big dog video, I felt like complete and utter fool,

but I did it. You know, it's so hard to do like 15 to 62nd cooking videos. I've tried. I have some out there too. I've had fun with them. But all you know, you stop start a step and then you put it in the draft because you have to come back three hours later, do the next step and then you forget to record it. And then like my There's always like, oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you, you got to turn the oven on 350 I like this really quick.

Yeah, well, so this is the thing, Chris, I have someone who's great on my team who helps me with my marketing, okay, I'm not in it by myself. So she's like prepping me, I'm videotaping it, and then she's doing the editing for me, right? And I know that that's like, next level beyond what you're doing. But that's, that's how I can do more and get the content out to more people. And again, like bringing back to money, my ability to make money, I'm using it to get my message out to help more people. And I'm using it to employ someone which I love, right? She's got a great life because of that, right? So this is these are like, this is my come from when I think about why I am going for more from a financial perspective.

Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, you make $40,000 last year and then this year you make 50. It's hard to not take Hit that 10,000 and run and go do what you want to do is like you really should take that money and put it back in your business. Because that 10,000 then becomes 50,000 potentially or whatever. But trying to get people to see that I have these conversations a lot with people and it's, it's tough.

So I have a little bit of a slight tweak on that. I think that you take 10% I've done a couple of things that I think are really powerful one, when I first was starting out, I took 10% of growth out of net of growth, and I put it towards charity. I did not have the money to do that. Okay, like it felt like I needed that money, man. Okay, it was pushing my limits, but I was like, I don't want to be afraid. I don't want to be in scarcity. I don't want to be feeling constrained around money. And so I had to make the charitable donation and change my energetics around If you will, so I did that. And then saving 10% to be your fun money is a super powerful thing, then take the rest of it, pay your bills, put it back into business, all of that stuff. But if you're not having fun with your life, okay, like, what's the frickin point? It has to also be like, I had to get my nails done. Right. That was part of it.

I think the challenge is like, everyone throws their opinions around, right? Whether it be people in real life or online, and I think those who don't have can be really critical of those who do without seeing. You know, I'll just say I have a family member who has never had money and doesn't have a good relationship with it. So then there's a lot of criticism about like, Oh, you guys went to Disney this year. That was like $7,000 it's like, yeah, I also worked my ass off for like 30 years in this industry to be able to go on like one really awesome vacation, but you know, it's It's really hard to spend that money because there are people who are going to kind of shoot those things at you sometimes.

Yeah, let me just give you something on that. Okay? So many people don't go after what they really want their big dreams, their big desires, because of the fear of what other people will think. Or say or do. And you know what Chris, other people will think and say or do exactly what you, you know, will cut you down. Okay? But you have to decide in advance, who are you going to listen to? Is that is that person who said that someone you you want to listen to just see inherent in what they just said. For me, defines them as someone I don't want to listen to. It makes no sense to me. And so I one of the things that I did was I made sure that I had in my environment, the people I wanted in mind. environment people who were going to support me and who were going to grow me. So I, you know, hired mentors very early on because they stretched me that I was like, they might have triggered me also, some of the things I'm saying to do right now might trigger your your audience, right? It's like I'm, I'm, I'm causing a new level of thinking, right, a new way of being. And I was triggered by by people who were more successful and doing it. And I was like, well, they don't seem like bad people, but they're talking about money in a completely different way than I ever experienced it. And I could feel this, this dissonance, and I had to decide what I wanted for myself. And whether the way I was doing it previously, was giving me the results that I wanted. And it wasn't I wasn't it wasn't a horrible, I don't want to I didn't want to counted I, you know, there was a good enough But as you know, good enough is the enemy of great. Okay, so I could see these are good results, but really I wanted so much more for myself and my family for for life and I wasn't getting those results. So am I going to continue to be abstinent and and do it my way? Or am I going to decide? Okay, my way is actually not getting the results that I want. Let me put myself in an environment and learn from someone who is getting the results that I want and seems to have very clean energy around it. Right like there's no wobble there. Let's Let's learn from from that person.

And from day one, I've wanted to talk about money on this podcast because you're taught you're not supposed to talk about money. Right. But I think you know, people, I think a lot of people under charge for their services. Which I know I did at the beginning. So I want to get out there and say like, this is what I charge. And, you know, this is the financial success I've had. So to kind of give you some context, like my dinner start at $100 a person. And that sounds like a lot, even to me right now. But I have guests who come on and say, Well, I do dinners and like $35 a person, I'm like, wow, you're under charging, because you can get 100. And they don't think they can, you know, and it's like, how do you get them to change their mindset? So I want to have these conversations and have everyone kind of talk about what they're charging, you know how much they're paying their employees, I make no bones about I say, I don't have employees. But when people work for me, they get 40 to $50 an hour, because that's what I want to pay people to do the job to give the level of service I want and for them to be able to have, you know, a good lifestyle, and just talk about those things out in the open. And someone might say, Well, I think you can get away with paying $15 an hour. That's fine. That's your business and what you think. But let's have those conversations and kind of see what the general consensus in our group is.

Yeah, I think it's important to pull out The curtain back on money and some of your folks are going to really want to be like, you know what, I want to make a lot of money. And some of your folks are going to be like, I'm really happy making X amount of money. Both are fine. Okay, both are good. It's like, the thing is that money doesn't make you better or worse, or good or bad, or any of that. It's just, it's just a tool. And how much do you want access to that tool? And, you know, then go go create it for yourself. Right? But but don't make what you want some what someone else has to have, or vice versa. Like, it's all very individual.

Yeah, I you know, I just want to tell people what I feel is possible, especially if you're in this local network. I mean, obviously, if you're in Des Moines, Iowa, the market is very different than the Washington DC area. I understand that but just kind of, especially talking to people locally, say Like, I know what this market is capable of, for your income doing this, like, I think you could maybe do this and that if you wanted to get there now, if you feel you want to provide more value, and that means charging less, yeah, sure, go do that. But like, the markets there if you're interested.

Yeah. And the market's there in Des Moines too, okay. Like it really is. You just have to see it.

So what else should people know about their relationship with money or what you do as we kind of come to a close here?

Yeah, I think there's a few things. I think people need to see the conditioning that they've had around money. I do a lot of teaching around the conditioning or how you were brought up in terms of finances, and we we were sponges when we were little, okay, and we just took in, you know, what our parents and what was around us in our environment told us about money. So you may have been brought up with, you know, statements like money doesn't grow on trees or or, you know, who do you think you are? Who do they think they are like, your parents might have judged rich people, right? And or maybe there was a uncle or aunt who made a lot of money and lost a lot of money. And there was like a family story about it. And you got programmed with a lot of stories around money. And one of the biggest ones is, you know, it's greedy or bad, or some sort of negative, evil thing, right? And so then why would we want it if we want to be good people, there's a there's a double bind, there are conflict, or why would we want it? If our parents judge the Joneses across the street for their brand new car, then we as a five year old, we mapped Oh, getting pretty nice things means that we're going to get judged and thrown out of the tribe. Okay, like our parents won't like that. Our parents weren't being malicious. They were just living their lives, but we get programmed in this way. And it creates double binds for us. And a double bind is when we say we want to double, triple our income, we have some financial goal. But then subconsciously, we think it's wrong or bad to be someone who makes significant money. And so we're holding a desire on the one hand, and a program on the other hand that are in conflict with each other. Okay? The program is always going to win until you learn how to unpack that and change your money consciousness. Okay? And that is something that I teach. I love teaching, it's a process and it's super critical to then be able to actually take the actions in your business that will scale it, okay, that will get you off the ground. Because if you have this kind of double bind, where you You think like making money is bad or you're going to be thrown out of the tribe, you're not going to set that next level goal. And then you're not going to do the things that are going to get you there. Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, my, my dad was a believer and work hard and people will take care of you. Like, you didn't ask for anything. You weren't supposed to ask for anything. He was a salesman at Sears. He did that for 40 years. He was never promoted. He was just like, salesman, like that was his thing. And like, it didn't work out, in my opinion. You know, like, he actually walked off the job his last day because he was fed up like as like the way retail sales went over the years, but for so many years, it was like, keep your head down, do what your boss tells you work hard, you'll be rewarded. And, you know, it's hard to realize like that wasn't the world, at least that I came into as a working person. You know, I had experiences where I was promised a raise and you took it on a handshake of your boss and then guess what a year later you're still not making the money you were promised but you don't say anything because you're not supposed to say anything. You're just supposed to say Get up and be like, Oh, well, I guess I got screwed, you know. And that's kind of how I was taught from a young age.

And so that builds a lot of distrust in other people. And think about that, if that's what you are taught. Money, money comes from the boss, and they're untrustworthy, they don't treat you well. That's what you're gonna keep creating. Okay? And like we talked about earlier, money comes through people through sales, so you have to get good with your relationship with people. And so if you just trust other people, because of that upbringing, you're never going to get good with people. And you're never going to be able to create the sales through your relationships. Does that make sense? Absolutely.

Yeah. I think I've come to terms with a lot of that over the years. You know, I'm now 10 years into my business, but you know, I kind of stumbled at the beginning there. I think I'm finally on the right track. Hopefully. I love it. I love it. Great. I've loved having you on the show. This was great. We're hoping to do a lot more of these having some people outside the food industry to come on kind of give their expert opinion on things. Do you have any resources besides your own? I mean, you have so many with your own business but any other books, podcasts anything you would recommend people checking out things that were beneficial to you?

Yeah, so I mean, we have done sup a woman podcast so definitely check that out. And we have all the free stuff that I mentioned the mindset stuff, we have a training on the income breakthrough jumpstart things like that really useful things. So definitely check that out. There are plenty of books that I would really recommend from a mindset around money perspective. The classic one is thinking Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. You know, I read it every day. I've been reading it every day for years. It's it's phenomenal. When I first read it, I wanted to throw it across the room like it was impenetrable to me. It didn't get it, but I stuck with it. And that's actually what I'm taking people through in the morning mindset club right now. There are a few others that I think are really great the science of getting rich by Wallace wattles and working with the law by Raman, Holywell, these are really mental aspects to they're not like, how to write, email, copy. I believe that those things are important, but they're very tactical. These are the sort of the success mindset that you actually need to approach your work in a more life kind of way in an expansive way. And once I really got these concepts, and let me just say, I didn't just read them, Chris. I applied them and this is one of the things that I work with my coaching clients on it's not just lip service, you actually have to live it. So when I when I talk about Like desires causative, and like you have to invest in yourself and you have to build yourself worth actually live that and I ran the stairs I like I actually spent more money on myself even when it terrified me, right I actually spent a gave money to charity, even when I thought I didn't have enough. Okay, right like i did i actually on the ground, took the action. And that's so important. So those are the resources that I would share. But then apply, apply, apply,

apply it. The great thing when I still had a job is I had a hour commute each way every day. And I love audiobooks and we just put these things on and listen to them. I mean, it's hard to take notes, so you just have to kind of let it sink in. But yeah, I agree. mindset is everything with getting so much of this going.

It continues to change my world every time. I dig in and do the work. I grow

so well. I think that's a great place to to leave it and I've loved having you on the show. Thank you so much for coming on.

You're so welcome, Chris. Thanks for having me. It was awesome, awesome question.

So to all of our listeners, this was the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast. And as always, you can find us at chefs without restaurants comm.org and on all social media platforms. Thanks and have a great day. Thanks for listening to the Chefs Without Sestaurants podcast. And if you're interested in being a guest on the show, or sponsoring the show, please let us know. We can be reached at chefswithoutrestaurants@gmail.com Thanks so much. Transcribed by https://otter.ai